The Last Defenders of a Dead Faith

How Anti-Leftist Reactionaries Became Capitalism’s Gravediggers

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

This is, after all, a philosophy blog. But sometimes the most important philosophical work is documenting how intelligent people convince themselves to commit suicide.

We are witnessing something historically unprecedented: a capitalist class so drunk on its own power that it has become incapable of recognizing its own interests. So ideologically committed to libertarian mythology that it cannot distinguish between democratic reform and revolutionary threat. So contemptuous of the very institutions that created their wealth that they are systematically destroying the conditions that make capitalism possible.

The anti-leftist reactionaries who fancy themselves capitalism’s defenders have become its gravediggers. And they’re too stupid to notice they’re holding shovels.

The Ezra Klein Test

Here is a simple diagnostic for measuring the intellectual bankruptcy of contemporary conservative thought: How do you respond to Ezra Klein?

Klein represents something that should be immediately recognizable to anyone with a functional understanding of political economy: the moderate reformist attempting to preserve capitalism through democratic constraint. He argues that markets can serve human flourishing if properly regulated. That wealth concentration threatens social stability and must be managed through policy. That capitalism’s legitimacy depends on its ability to deliver broadly shared prosperity.

This is not radical socialism. This is not even European-style social democracy. This is center-left liberalism making the case for preserving private property within democratic institutions. Klein is literally arguing for capitalism—just capitalism that operates within legal and moral boundaries rather than as an extractive free-for-all.

Yet the self-appointed defenders of free enterprise treat Klein as an ideological enemy. They see his calls for antitrust enforcement as attacks on economic freedom. They interpret his proposals for progressive taxation as creeping communism. They respond to his warnings about oligarchy with lectures about the virtues of individual achievement.

This response reveals everything you need to know about how thoroughly anti-leftist reactionaries have lost the plot. When you cannot distinguish between someone trying to save your system and someone trying to destroy it, you have forfeited any claim to strategic thinking.

The Historical Blindness

The truly maddening aspect of this intellectual failure is that we have been here before. The original Gilded Age produced the exact same patterns: extreme wealth concentration, regulatory capture, oligarchic political influence, declining living standards for ordinary workers, and growing populist resentment against the system.

The resolution came through the New Deal—a series of reforms that constrained capitalism enough to preserve it. Progressive taxation, labor rights, antitrust enforcement, financial regulation, social insurance. These were not anti-capitalist measures; they were pro-capitalist measures that saved the system from revolutionary alternatives that would have been far more threatening to private property.

Franklin Roosevelt was not capitalism’s enemy. He was its savior. He offered the American ruling class a deal: accept democratic constraints on your power in exchange for legitimacy and stability. The smart money took the deal. The result was the most prosperous and stable period in American economic history.

But contemporary reactionaries have learned exactly the wrong lesson from this history. They see the New Deal not as capitalism’s salvation but as its betrayal. They have convinced themselves that any constraint on oligarchic power represents an existential threat to economic freedom. They would rather risk revolutionary upheaval than accept marginal limitations on their ability to extract wealth from democratic institutions.

This is not principled commitment to free markets. This is historical amnesia combined with suicidal arrogance.

The Marxist Caricature

The cruelest irony is that contemporary capitalism has become indistinguishable from Marx’s critique of it. The system that anti-leftist reactionaries claim to defend now exhibits every pathology that socialist theory predicted: extreme inequality, regulatory capture, the subordination of democratic governance to capital accumulation, the treatment of human needs as secondary to profit maximization.

Marx argued that capitalism would eventually become so extractive and corrupt that it would delegitimize itself, creating the conditions for its own replacement. He predicted that the capitalist class would be incapable of restraining its appetite for accumulation even when that appetite threatened the system’s survival.

And here we are. Oligarchs giving themselves massive tax cuts while cutting healthcare for the poor. Tech monopolies manipulating democratic discourse while lecturing about free speech. Financial institutions engaging in obvious fraud while warning about the dangers of regulation. Corporate interests writing their own environmental rules while the planet burns.

This is not capitalism as envisioned by Adam Smith or even Friedrich Hayek. This is capitalism as caricatured by its harshest critics. And the people who claim to be its greatest defenders are the ones making the caricature real.

When your system becomes indistinguishable from its enemies’ propaganda, you have a problem that goes far beyond public relations.

The Coming Reckoning

The anti-leftist reactionaries seem to believe they can maintain this trajectory indefinitely. That they can concentrate wealth, capture institutions, ignore democratic preferences, and somehow avoid the historical consequences of oligarchic overreach.

They are wrong.

The signs are everywhere for those with eyes to see. Populist anger spanning the political spectrum. Christian nationalists embracing anti-capitalist rhetoric. MAGA supporters cheering the prosecution of tech executives. Progressive movements gaining ground in Democratic primaries. Young Americans expressing preference for socialism over capitalism in polling.

This is not normal political volatility. This is pre-revolutionary sentiment. And it is building precisely because the existing system has become so obviously rigged in favor of concentrated wealth that its basic legitimacy is collapsing.

The oligarchs think they can ride this tiger. They believe that MAGA populism will remain controllable, that they can use nationalist fervor to distract from economic extraction, that they can maintain their wealth while the country burns around them.

They are catastrophically mistaken. Populist movements do not stay bought. Revolutionary sentiment does not respect class boundaries. When the torches and pitchforks come—and they are coming—the mob will not carefully distinguish between oligarchs who supported Trump and oligarchs who opposed him.

The Deal They’re Refusing

Here is what makes this historical moment so maddening: the deal is still on the table. Democratic reformers like Klein are still offering the same basic bargain that saved capitalism during the Great Depression. Accept progressive taxation. Submit to antitrust enforcement. Allow labor organizing. Provide social insurance. Fund public goods.

In exchange: legitimacy, stability, and the preservation of private property within democratic institutions.

This is not a hostile takeover. This is not revolutionary expropriation. This is the gentle management of capitalism’s contradictions through democratic means. It is the most generous offer the oligarchs are ever going to receive.

And they are rejecting it. Not because it threatens their core interests, but because it threatens their total dominance. Not because it would impoverish them, but because it would make them merely very rich rather than obscenely rich. Not because it would eliminate capitalism, but because it would make capitalism serve something other than pure wealth accumulation.

Their greed has made them stupid. Their power has made them blind. Their ideology has made them suicidal.

The Intellectual Collapse

What we are witnessing is not just political or economic failure but intellectual failure of the most basic kind. The inability to distinguish between friends and enemies. The confusion of tactical disagreement with existential threat. The replacement of strategic thinking with ideological reflex.

When you treat Ezra Klein as a greater threat than rising authoritarianism, you have lost your capacity for rational political analysis. When you see antitrust enforcement as more dangerous than oligarchic capture, you have abandoned any serious commitment to democratic governance. When you respond to warnings about wealth concentration with lectures about entrepreneurial virtue, you have entered a fantasy world disconnected from material reality.

This is not conservatism. This is not even reactionary politics. This is the intellectual equivalent of auto-immune disease—a system attacking the very mechanisms designed to preserve it.

The Chinese Calculation

While American elites busy themselves looting their own country, China builds state capacity. While our oligarchs capture regulatory agencies, theirs invest in infrastructure. While we debate whether billionaires should pay taxes, they plan for the next century.

The anti-leftist reactionaries imagine they are defending American economic supremacy against foreign competition. In reality, they are ensuring American economic collapse by making democratic capitalism impossible to sustain.

China does not need to defeat American capitalism. American capitalists are defeating it themselves. All China needs to do is wait for the inevitable implosion and pick up the pieces.

This is perhaps the most contemptible aspect of the entire spectacle: the people who claim to love America most are the ones ensuring its decline. They are so committed to their ideological abstractions that they cannot see the country crumbling around them.

The Last Warning

To the remaining anti-leftist reactionaries who still possess some capacity for rational thought: you are running out of time. The window for democratic reform is closing. The alternatives to Klein-style liberalism are not libertarian paradise but revolutionary upheaval.

You can accept higher taxes and stronger regulations now, or you can face wealth confiscation and system replacement later. You can submit to democratic constraint voluntarily, or you can be subjected to popular justice involuntarily. You can take the deal while it’s still available, or you can explain to the mob why private property deserves protection.

These are your choices. There are no others.

The French aristocracy thought they could maintain their privileges indefinitely too. The Russian oligarchs believed their wealth made them untouchable. Every ruling class in history has convinced itself that this time would be different.

None of them were correct.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And oligarchy always ends the same way—either through reform or through revolution. There are no other options.

The clock is ticking. The deal is still on the table. But not for much longer.

Choose wisely. Or don’t choose at all, and let history choose for you.

You will not like history’s choice.